Anniversary Adventures

This year we celebrated our anniversary twice: in Salt Lake and California! In June Mark surprised me to a night at Inn on the Hill, a bed and breakfast just northeast of the conference center overlooking the valley. That Friday we went to Utah Arts Festival and Saturday we toured the Conference Center, etc.


This is the Inn on the Hill!





This is a view of the church admin building and Salt Lake Temple, from the hotel.












Close up of the temple.














At the Arts Festival, they had an "earth harp", with very long strings connected from the platform you see here, to a bridge walkway to the right. The strings were 50 or more feet long! It resonated beautifully throughout the plaza.






The Conference Center is just loaded with beautiful artwork. This piece is one of my favorites. It's stained glass, made at the Holdman Institute at Thanksgiving Point, where I work. They've also done many stained glass windows for temples in the last decade or so. The image is based on a painting by Carl Bloch.







Now on to the second part of our anniversary celebration, our trip to Los Angeles.

We're standing in front of the Los Angeles Temple.
This picture is similar to one we used for our wedding announcement, back in 1973!






After the temple, Mark showed me tickets he'd gotten to "Wicked", a play showing later that night at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. He had taken Shelly to it four years ago and I'd wanted to see it since then. SO this was a GREAT surprise!!








Our boat over to Catalina. It was the early boat out of San Pedro, so we were still waking up from our late night at Pantegas.









My island escort! A great way to see the island!
And WHAT an escort!












A view of Catalina Harbor at Avalon.












Sunday morning we went to a ward in Los Alamitos where Mark grew up, and then visited with Kevin and Ellen on Sunday. On Monday morning, before my flight home, we walked along the beach in Manhattan Beach.


These were incredible times together. But then it's been an incredible thirty-five years together.